Q&A yep.

[Smmenen]

Isn't the most important card to resolve In the Eye in that matchup?

[Revvik]

But a colored mana and two colorless should let you cast anything in the deck barring Stack and Karn.
Re: In the Eye of Chaos - With Bazaar of Baghdad and sorcery-speed draw, how effective is In the Eye here?

[Smmenen]

But a colored mana and two colorless should let you cast anything in the deck barring Stack and Karn.
Re: In the Eye of Chaos - With Bazaar of Baghdad and sorcery-speed draw, how effective is In the Eye here?

I thought Leviat.dec used Intuitions.  Moreover, it stops all his countermagic.  FOW costs 5 to PITCH CAST and Drain costs 4.  You can then resolve whatever the hell you want and destroy him if you resolve In the Eye. 

IN the Eye is like Sextosphere.

I'd probably play Crypt, Workshop Trinisphere with turn two In the Eye.

[Matt]

To all those bemoaning the lack of artifacts in Fish builds: don't forget that you can turn a Factory into an Assembly Worker and sacrifice that to Tinker.

Also, the reason not to wait on the Mana Crypt is in case they Wasteland your Workshop. Perhaps this was too obvious, because I don't think it'd been mentioned.

[Revvik]

I'd probably play Crypt, Workshop Trinisphere with turn two In the Eye.

My point then was "why bother casting the Crypt turn one, since it opens you up to a turn of Crypt damage without using it at all that turn."  I think it's simply the safer play, since it still allows you to play anything you draw barring Karn or Smokestack (neither of which is likely to be topdecked).  Rewarding, if the game goes long.

Matt: your opponent is playing Leviat.dec, and Wasteland isn't an issue - otherwise, the Crypt is definitely the right call.

[Saucemaster]

I think it's simply the safer play, since it still allows you to play anything you draw barring Karn or Smokestack (neither of which is likely to be topdecked).  Rewarding, if the game goes long.

No, what you really want to topdeck is Sphere of Resistance.  Then you can play City, use it and the Crypt for Chains or In The Eye, then drop your topdecked Sphere with the Workshop.  Crypt gives you the opportunity to make this play (as well as Karn, as well as Smokestack, as well as Crucible, even if Crucible doesn't particularly matter at the moment).  I'm in the drop-Crypt-now camp.  Always give yourself as many opportunities as possible.

[Rico Suave]

If Mana Crypt cost 3 mana instead of 0, would you even play it?

Perhaps this will clear up why you should play Mana Crypt before Trinisphere. 

[rvs]

And to be totally clear: you can also just topdeck a Mox which you probably want to throw down. Like Saucemaster said: it's about keeping as much options as possible open.

[Smmenen]

1) From a theoretical standpoint - shouldn't the card Oath of Druids be seeing more play and in more variety given how good Fish and Workshop aggro decks are? Even if the lists don't use Orchard - the quantity of creatures in the format seems to suggest that Oath would be good - at least better than the metagame gives it credit for - no?

2) What decks should use Pithing Needle and in what quantities?

3) What happened to Gifts decks - it looked like everyone loved them and now lots of people have stopped playing them? What happened?

4) Is Ideas Unbound broken? If so, what deck does it belong in? If its a new deck, what does that deck look like?

In order now.
1: Oath of Druids as a card is actually impressive right now. The deck itself might have some flaws to be fixed, but the card can be very effective right now and I'm suprised that so few people are using it. I think part of it is that (Some) MWS and Fish decks now no longer auto-lose to a resolved Oath and that it takes a turn to effectively function. The other part is people just refusing to change what creatures they run, even though there are some obvious choices which are more effective than SOTN / Akroma / Hydra agains aggro at the moment. For example, Crater Hellion clears almost any creature currently played from the board and dies so you can Oath up another creature the following turn. Spike Weaver can fog for 3 turns while you either Oath up another creature to win with or another Spike to 'go infinite' with. This effectively stops DSC and more Jitte counters from accumulating. Oathing up Rector w/ Therapy is also a very valid option many combo decks seem to overlook, despite the obvious goodness involved against aggro.

It's sort of funny, a 3-4c control deck could be viable right now with it's main defense against creatures being Oath -> Exalted Angel or DSC or anything similar, as you said, without Orchard. I chalk this up to the fact that Oath saw nearly no play pre-Orchard so everyone absolutely must run it to even consider the card.

2: I'd like to say Fish, but only later once the meta adjusts. I expect it to see more play in boards when people start playing more removal, then it'll be used to shut off EE, Old Man, Disk and other various permenant based removal. I actually think Dragon could gain the most out of the use of Needle, why? It shuts off Wasteland, which is one of the biggest detriments (at least in my experince) to comboing off early in the game. If Tog or Welders ever came back to be a major force, I could also see it being used. Ironically though the Tog decks probably will just replace Tog with Tinker -> DSC so it matters a lot less now.

One of the least talked about uses of the Needle is to shut off Vial for a deck like CS or Gifts. Considering that Vial allows them to fight multiple counter wars over creatures (Counter fight over Vial and then the creature itself) or dodge counters entirely while leaving mana open.. it may be worthwhile. Also note turn 1 Chalice won't stop you from dropping a Needle if you want (Unlike higher costing anwsers).

3: This has just been my experince with them, but I've found 2 issues / events which I think caused the deck to fade.
A. It's vunerable mana base and threshold of 7-9 mana for an 'I-Win' situation to occur (barring blind Tinker for DSC).

The decks have very efficent mana bases that can stand up well to losing a land, but if you can shut down the artifact mana or hit multiple lands, the deck sort of flounders. It can draw all the cards it wants, but suddenly as long as it gets limited to only casting 1, or maybe 2, a turn the opponent can just goldfish you. U/G and W/U Vial Fish decks abused this and were mostly proven to be effective counters to the average Gifts build. By effectively denying it's mana it usually is just casting card drawing spells to make other cards 'live' again. Chalice is huge in this match because everything in the Gifts deck that affects the board costs so damn much. It's also useful to note how little it DOES effect the board before it tries to win, this is why certain MWS decks can also effectively stall it out for a Juggernaut or similar beater to go all the way.

B. Control Slaver was proven not to be completely inferior to said Gifts decks.

The original consensus was that Gifts did everything CS did, but better. After a number of tourneys and infinitely more testing, a number of people are beginning to discard that notion and go back to CS or just switch to a Fish deck for consistencies sake. Other control decks like Oath and CS were also showing better aggro games than Gifts, so that was another part of the switch I believe.

4:
A. I think it's a decent card, but not broken. UU limits it a LOT to what it's worth playing in. WOTC put just enough of a drawback on here to prevent it from being awesome.
B. I originally thought it'd be a good addition for Affinity or a new breed of Madness decks. This hasn't proven to be the case though as, as listed above, UU is a harsh mana requirement with the added drawback of limiting what you can do during your mainphase.
C. Honestly? Welder Reanimator or a new build of the other two decks I listed. The only decks I've had even mixed results in was a deck a bit like turbo-titan / CA. On turn 1 I typically have better plays than Careful Study and so it makes sense to use the beefier better versiion of it. The card isn't broken or even great, but it's efficent and not a complete crapfest in these sorts of decks.

Ironically the archetype I find REALLY can't support it is combo. I much rather play Night's Whisper or Meditate than try and come up with consistent UU cost unless I'm playing High Tide.

Well, I know all of that.  I was hoping for more specifics.  If Oath is good, then why aren't people playing it, etc?

[Revvik]

Well, I know all of that.  I was hoping for more specifics.  If Oath is good, then why aren't people playing it, etc?

- Fish is cheaper.
- Getting your Oath creatures in hand and a Blessing can be rather frustrating.
- Two Card Combo (it really isn't, the way the format works makes Forbidden Orchard almost unnecessary).
- More "hate"

There's more to it, but I've only played Oath of Druids decks for short periods of time, since I enjoy control decks more than aggro-control.
The reason may also be because Oath decks have (since Richmond so long ago) failed to put up numbers like that since, regardless of whether or not people have been metagaming their lists properly or just going "heh Meandeck Oath" instead (no offense, of course  ).

[jcb193]

Question for the Magic genie:

If you could print any card(s) to "balance" T1, what would they be, or what would they attempt to do?

JB

[JuJu]

The problem with Oath is the win condition takes two cards, even three. You can't just draw Akroma and play it like you could with other decks. You have to draw that oath, wait a turn and hope your creatures don't get killed before then. I agree that you can easily get Oath, Mox, Orchard first turn and ride that but like every other Oath deck, there was no late or mid game in the deck. The reason that it's not seeing play is because people adapted to the early game and are using chalices and everything else to slow the early game so Oath loses to a late game, where Fish for example has more threats.

All of that is probably messy but I'm not sure how to further explain it.

[Revvik]

I think it could be done along the lines of 2003's Sapphire Oath, but it would take a massive revamp.

[Vegeta2711]

First off, what the hell happened? 10-15 replies on one obvious opening hand with Stax? In a match-up that doesn't even matter? Solid. Ugh. =/

Freelancer:

How competitive do you consider birdsh*t to be? And what are its weakest aspects? Any idea's how to improve this? (not asking for a decklist, just guidelines)

BS is basically a worse version of WTF. The weakest aspect has always been it's pile of shit mana base, the fact is the deck would love Vial, but running Null Rod screws that. If you really wanted to play BS still, you'd take WTF, add the white splash to the maindeck, run 4 Meddling Mage and 2 Plows / Seal of Cleansing maindeck. You're mana suddenly isn't a total pile since you have Vial to smooth it out.

If you wanted the traditional BS build, you'd have to add another land to the maindeck and possibly up the Daze count.

Well, I know all of that.  I was hoping for more specifics.  If Oath is good, then why aren't people playing it, etc?

Um, how much more specific can I actually get with some of these answers?

A2: People aren't playing Oath the deck right now, because it's hard-pressed to beat CS or Gifts. The draw engine sucks by comparision to what they run and they only have to stop Oath of Druids from hitting play. Just about any other card resolving doesn't matter in the least against these decks. The deck needs to be revamped to to actually do something else when it can't resolve an 'easy' Oath. Salvagers Oath has the back-up plan of either resolving Salvagers and/or Gifts to win the game, but it doesn't have a very good Fish game (At least game 1) so that idea is out.

Oath the card isn't being played right now, because of the stereotypes surrounding it's use, the fact that it forces you to play green and that it takes up a good chunk of deck space. 2-4 Oath, 2-3 Kill creatures and 1-2 Blessing. At minimum that's 5 deck slots which is signficant and if that's going to be one of you're only defenses against aggro, you'd want to run the full gamut of 3-4. So then it jumps to 7 slots taken up by a set of cards that sucks in the control match. Suddenly you devoted a lot of deck space to a combo that's not even very efficent and that is also the problem with not running Orchard. If I were to add Oath to a deck for my main creature defense, I'd take one of the older 3cc models and work in 2-3 Oath with Exalted Angel and DSC as the main kill creatures. That allows me to hardcast or Tinker out my creatures safely and ignore running Blessing under the assumption that I won't need to oath more than 1-2 times. That or add a Trop or two to the traditional Gifts deck and run Oath in the board for the Fish matches.

So yeah my more specific answer is the amount of deck space the combo takes up and running green. Drawing them as dead cards sucks as well, but honestly most decks right now run 2-6 dead (In the sense that they're useless without a secondary card) cards maindeck anyways.

B2: Fish to deal with removal. Fish decks should run 3-4 at the first sign that the metagame adjusted. Dragon should probably run 3-4.

C2: The mana SUCKS HARD and CS doesn't roll to UG Vial Fish as much as Gifts, thanks to the 'win small' ability of Welder -> TFK. Gifts is a big flashy show everytime it wins, it needs a lot of things to roll right for it to work. If even one piece is out of place, the deck falls apart faster than Kowal's car.

D2: The card draws 3 cards. That's good. UU kills it for Vintage play though and that's the bottom line.

Question for the Magic genie:

If you could print any card(s) to "balance" T1, what would they be, or what would they attempt to do?

JB

Question is invalid. I don't play what-if CC type stuff, nor I could I give an answer since T1 is pretty 'balanced' as is compared to previous years.

[savekeeper]

First of, props for doing this. 

A few questions regarding U/g Fish:

- Do you think the splash for Meddling Mage is worth messing around with the mana base?
  - If you would run Mage's, would StP be a good addition too combat big fat (DC is a bitch, as is Pentavus, Exalted Angel etc. even with Jitte since that card is slow) or would it mean a mana base that is equally bad like Bird Shit?

- What is your opinion on Rootwater Thief/Waterfront Bouncer in a general/unknown (but powered) metagame? Or they any good or too narrow?

- How do you play out the Stax and 5/3 matchups with this deck? What should you counter, or name with Mage (if you're running it)? Which sideboard cards are the best too bring in (including white cards) and which cards would you take out? I know that depends on the build, but could you give me a list of which cards are the worst in the Workshop match up (considering options as Thief, Bouncer etc.)?

That is it for now, hopefully I'm not asking for too much.

[PipOC]

If your opponent has played no relevant spells what cards would you name with Cranial Extraction against the top decks now?

I've looked at the old thread discussing this, but it's quite old and incomplete, and not very relevant anymore.

[Hi-Val]

If they've been playing Island-go their whole game, I'd nab Brainstorms. If you have an idea that they're running them, you can also name Drains. As a last ditch, there's always Force of Will, but I think cutting off the other two (and ESPECIALLY brainstorm) is more significant. Your opponent has fewer Ancestrals to draw into, and that isn't bad at all. Their hand may be junk that can be shuffled back with Brainstorm, so you gain some virtual card advantage as well.

[Mixing Mike]

What's your position on Sensei's Top in terms of the metagame as a whole.  Why do you feel this way?

What's your position on team secrecy?  Is this position infulenced in any way by being on a team?

[Nantuko Rice]

If you were going to a big 40 dual land tournament tomorrow and you didn't know what to play because there are so many viable decks right now, what deck would you plan to play?

How do you feel about the diversity of the current metagame?

(basically this SCG thread http://www.starcitygames.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=279143&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=25 )

[mr_rogers]

With chalice/vial becoming so popular do you think Null Rod should see more play than it does?  In my expirience a resolved Null Rod against a deck running Jitte and Vial was a game over for them.

[Vegeta2711]

First of, props for doing this. 

A few questions regarding U/g Fish:

- Do you think the splash for Meddling Mage is worth messing around with the mana base?
  - If you would run Mage's, would StP be a good addition too combat big fat (DC is a bitch, as is Pentavus, Exalted Angel etc. even with Jitte since that card is slow) or would it mean a mana base that is equally bad like Bird Shit?

- What is your opinion on Rootwater Thief/Waterfront Bouncer in a general/unknown (but powered) metagame? Or they any good or too narrow?

- How do you play out the Stax and 5/3 matchups with this deck? What should you counter, or name with Mage (if you're running it)? Which sideboard cards are the best too bring in (including white cards) and which cards would you take out? I know that depends on the build, but could you give me a list of which cards are the worst in the Workshop match up (considering options as Thief, Bouncer etc.)?

That is it for now, hopefully I'm not asking for too much.

Thanks, I figure this was a fun little thread to try.

I think Meddling Mage -could- be worth it purely by process of elimination. Almost all of the creatures you run either beatdown or are non-disruptive. Spiketail Hatchling is the equivalent to complete crap so if you felt it worthwhile to run a disrupting creature over another beater (say Mongoose / Werebear or something) then I think Meddling Mage is worth it. I'll be honest with you, when I tested WTF, I found the mana base to be complete crap when up against ANY disruption what-so-ever. So that's the thing, if you add a few Tundra to the deck you really don't make the deck any worse off against disruption than you did before. As for the mana against a normal deck, you reduce the consistency a little, but with 4 Brainstorm and 4 Vial you can dodge a lot of mana problems. Summary: I think it's worth it.

Plow's goodness is in direct proportion to how many creatures you can't run over. I.E. Darksteel Colossus. Honestly I think Jitte is enough removal-wise to beat other aggro while not being dead in control matches. Meanwhile in awesometown; Thief is great against about half the decks in the meta right now, it's essentially a 1 to 4 turn clock against a large number of decks. Bouncer is very limited in scope and only really good against Oath and blind Tinker so it seems like more of a board / meta card.

Stax is a pretty simple match to play, dump all the permenants on the board you can ASAP. Go all in with your guys, because unless they Balance they'll quickly be completely overwhelmed. Save FoW for; and name Mage on Tinker and Balance respectively, since you can let almost any other card resolve thanks to Aether Vial. If they're already onto your little plan and play Shattering Pulse or Rack and Ruin, things get dicey, but you get Oxidize post board soo... I've never really had an issue in the match. As you said, it depends on the listing really... I dislike siding out creatures, because those and Chalice are generally the cheapest and easiest permenants to play. Bouncer is complete crap in the Stax match though and the same with Standstill if you still run it.

5/3 is a lot harder, try to make reasonable trades with Rootwalla and Wild Mongrel since many builds are cutting back on the number of threats they run. Strips tend to be a lot more important in this match-up  Mage in this match typically names Razormane Masticore, but if you can get it early name Goblin Welder. Typically those are the biggest threats against you, as you can trade with Juggernauts on a 1-1 basis and force whatever disruptive crap they play like Crucible or Sphere. Of course if you have Vial out, you can ignore that aspect entirely and focus on beating their own threats.

Sorry for not being able to help more on the boarding out part, but 1. I'm not that good at boarding with WTF really 2. I'm not -that- experinced with the deck.

If your opponent has played no relevant spells what cards would you name with Cranial Extraction against the top decks now?

I've looked at the old thread discussing this, but it's quite old and incomplete, and not very relevant anymore.

If I could resolve a CE against Gifts I'd name Tinker or Will respectively, since without those the deck generally falls to shit. Gifts finds the cards, but Tinker straight up wins and Yawg's Will can produce such an obscene resource boost that stealing Tinker may not be enough. If we're talking draw-go against Gifts then I'd be tempted to name Drain or Brainstorm as stealing those cards can slow the deck by quite a bit. Against Oath, it's namesake, obviously. Against CS, I'd name Thirst for Knowledge usually, they have too many win conditions to effectively shut off and it's hard to race Welder. TFK however is what makes the deck tick, without that, it's a really bad extended Tinker imitation. Stax, um... any disruption piece that'll affect your board the most (Usually Smokestack though). Against 5/3 I'd typically name TFK since that wrecks their own source of hand replinshment. Dragon = Dragon. FCG - Ringleader or Warchief. Fish - Anything you want. I'd guess Standstill / Brainstorm though IF Vial is in play. Against Rod builds, name Null Rod, Jitte etc... I think that sums up a lot of it.

What's your position on Sensei's Top in terms of the metagame as a whole. Why do you feel this way?

It's underrated and underused. I'll expand upon this tommorow along with your other question and the same with everyone elses questions. I'm just tired from Regionals and I'll answer in-depth later. The exception to this is Rice's first question since that could require an immediate answer, again I'll expand upon it more tommorow.

If you were going to a big 40 dual land tournament tomorrow and you didn't know what to play because there are so many viable decks right now, what deck would you plan to play?

If I was going to a large tourney in NE and I wasn't sure what to play, I'd settle for betting on the meta being mostly CS, Gifts and Fish (Null Rod and Vial variety). As such I'd either run a metagamed WTF build depending on how much Fish is being played like more MD Jitte and If you're willing to pray to the mana gods or rely on Vial, Troll Ascetic is damned good.) possibly Seasigner or Old Man. As an alternate I'd consider an 5/3 aggressive build much like Brad's (RicoZ0r) deck that placed at SCG and is listed on the board. Pretty self explanatory choices, both have 50/50 to favorable games against the triad of CS, Gifts and Fish.

If you want more of a rogue choice, honestly try out Titan MUD. Metalworker is damned good at churning out turn 2 Sphere + Smokestack or a Sundering Titan. Sad as having a lousy draw engine may be, it's suprisingly heavy threat density and additional mana powering from Metalworker can make up for it.

[Vegeta2711]

Part 2.

What's your position on Sensei's Top in terms of the metagame as a whole?  Why do you feel this way?

I think it’s underused. Decks typically love running Brainstorm and the Top is a great Brainstorm effect. I believe a Workshop based aggro deck could value from having the Top and the same goes with a modified version of Stax with shuffle effects. Sensei is a good example of a control deck that could use it and I believe other control decks could possibly benefit from it (omfgwtfbbq, look at Jor<3’s newest report, that’s what I’m talking about). Brainstorm is amazing, but in certain decks, the ability to have the effect multiple times in a row is huge. It’s also an artifact, which helps with certain cards like Goblin Welder (Stack the draw effect and sacrifice the Top before it goes on top of your library) and Thirst for Knowledge for some examples. Just like Brainstorm can be pitched to FoW if need be, many people miss the little things that card can do.

What's your position on team secrecy?  Is this position influenced in any way by being on a team?

My basic position is, oh well. Honestly it’s one of the obvious things that was going to happen when you start having PTQ- skill level events for a minimum 300+ dollar prize just for making T8, let alone how much you get for winning. I don’t think any good came from the whole  ‘let’s withhold decklist results from major events!’ type thing, but in general I’m fine with it team secrecy. However I think more teams should try to explain their reasoning behind the decks when they do well. And I don’t mean like a month or two later, I mean within a week or so. You don’t necessarily need an article, but some basic information on some decklist choices and matches is nice. Not only does this save some arguing about some of the more trivial choices in a deck, but also it gives you a chance to maybe have a better choice pointed out to you.

How do you feel about the diversity of the current metagame?

Personally? I think it’s great. Oh yes, it’s hard to precisely metagame and so many decks are inferior… blah blah, wah wah. You know what? People in Vintage are always going to play decks that are strictly as powerful as others (See: Inferior builds / variants) just because usually the difference in power is rather small. Your deck can be half as broken as DeathLong or Belcher and still win off Yawgmoth’s Will and your deck can be less objectively powerful than another version, but still win just as well off Thirst for Knowledge and Goblin Welder as it can. Plus some people will always naturally play bad decks, some people gravitate towards them. It's only really noticable in smaller tourneys, otherwise your putting too much stock into it. I just attended a 300 man regionals Standard event and I saw plenty of crap mixed in with good decks. You just accept it.

As for Fish coming back, I think that’s awesome as well. Having a strong aggro deck to try to keep the control decks honest (look at some of the mana base bullshit and complete lack of answers they were trying to pull) can only help the metagame. Extended was like this for a while and then everyone realized that the best decks were almost all red based and changed accordingly. I figure eventually Vintage will follow suit and decks will once again metagame against each other and run cards that, ya know, affect the board!

With chalice/vial becoming so popular do you think Null Rod should see more play than it does?  In my experience a resolved Null Rod against a deck running Jitte and Vial was a game over for them.

Really? Why is that exactly? Typically the Null Rod Fish player is going to be scooping if Mongrel stays on the board for too long, so I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Though I admit active Null Rod won’t be fun for the Vial player. I think Null Rod will see the same amount of play as it has been for a while now. I doubt the Vial / Jitte builds gives anyone enough reason to suddenly change up to playing Null Rod Fish, though it should give a number of people incentive to stay with the older builds.

[Sgt. Pepper]

I'll be honest with you, when I tested WTF, I found the mana base to be complete crap when up against ANY disruption what-so-ever. So that's the thing, if you add a few Tundra to the deck you really don't make the deck any worse off against disruption than you did before. As for the mana against a normal deck, you reduce the consistency a little, but with 4 Brainstorm and 4 Vial you can dodge a lot of mana problems. Summary: I think it's worth it.

If the manabase is crap without Tundra's, and adding Tundra's doesn't matter, should any remaining basics be swapped for additional Tundra's or fetchland?
Also, I remember you saying that the worst part of Birdshit was its manabase, is this now also true for is WTF? If WTF is viable with a terrible manabase, does this mean that Birdshit is viable as well?

Thief is great against about half the decks in the meta right now, it's essentially a 1 to 4 turn clock against a large number of decks. Bouncer is very limited in scope and only really good against Oath and blind Tinker so it seems like more of a board / meta card.

If you think Thief is that good, would you play it over the DC-Tinker-Mystical combo or would you cut Ninja of the Deep Hours?

Stax is a pretty simple match to play, dump all the permenants on the board you can ASAP. Go all in with your guys, because unless they Balance they'll quickly be completely overwhelmed. Save FoW for; and name Mage on Tinker and Balance respectively, since you can let almost any other card resolve thanks to Aether Vial. If they're already onto your little plan and play Shattering Pulse or Rack and Ruin, things get dicey, but you get Oxidize post board soo... I've never really had an issue in the match. As you said, it depends on the listing really... I dislike siding out creatures, because those and Chalice are generally the cheapest and easiest permenants to play. Bouncer is complete crap in the Stax match though and the same with Standstill if you still run it.

You said you will name Tinker and Balance with Meddling Mage, but what about Smokestack? I can understand that Balance and Tinker are bombs against WTF, but Smokestack is a 40-off and scares this shit out of me. Don;t you fear Smokestack or do you think you can race it?
Since I fear Stax a lot (probably more then I should) which card would be best in addition to Oxidize? I was thinking Sacred Ground myself, but I could be wrong.

Last question, whats your opinion Pithing Needle in WTF, main or sideboard? Does WTF need it, and if so, against which deck?

[cosineme]

This question is regarding duress and its place in control decks. Against fish and workshop, duress is almost always only useful in the first 2-3 turns. After that you run out of goodies to hit. That means you want to run the full set. Against control, duress is a back breaker, allowing you to force your gameplan through. Howeverin the face of such a large fish meta, is packing 4x duress in a control deck a good idea?

If you are going first, chalice, rod, vial, as well as control components are all game. However, fetching out an u. sea first turn to duress means that you are that much less likely to hit drain mana on turn 2 due to the significant number of waste lands that are being played. In light of this, some players have been fetching out a lone swamp turn 1 to duress. How do you feel about this play? Putting off drain mana for a turn is significant when control vs fish battles are such close games already.

Finally, in our current environment, is duress and mana drain mutually exclusive? If you want to drain turn 2 a significant portion of the time, you can't afford to duress without fear.

So, which is it?

[Vegeta2711]

If the manabase is crap without Tundra's, and adding Tundra's doesn't matter, should any remaining basics be swapped for additional Tundra's or fetchland?
Also, I remember you saying that the worst part of Birdshit was its manabase, is this now also true for is WTF? If WTF is viable with a terrible manabase, does this mean that Birdshit is viable as well?

I think you should still run at least 1/2 basics to dodge the (now rather common) Waste-Crucible lock in case you can't get Vial to stick. But anything past that? Throw it out and just run more non-basics to help your own consistency.

If you think Thief is that good, would you play it over the DC-Tinker-Mystical combo or would you cut Ninja of the Deep Hours?

I'd play it over Skyfolk usually, but if that adversely affects your consistency (Hasn't for me yet, since I run 4 Brainstorm) run it over the DC-Tinker-Mystical trick. And yes it is a trick.

You said you will name Tinker and Balance with Meddling Mage, but what about Smokestack? I can understand that Balance and Tinker are bombs against WTF, but Smokestack is a 40-off and scares this shit out of me. Don;t you fear Smokestack or do you think you can race it?
Since I fear Stax a lot (probably more then I should) which card would be best in addition to Oxidize? I was thinking Sacred Ground myself, but I could be wrong.

I think if it's a 40-of you can just call a judge then. But yeah, Smokestack is another permenant that can give you a real headache. The key about that over the other two cards is that Smokestack gives you TIME. I've lost nearly my entire board and still won, at least way more times than I've recovered from Balance and gone on to win. Sacred Ground is probably the best choice, but just Oxidize should be enough.

Last question, whats your opinion Pithing Needle in WTF, main or sideboard? Does WTF need it, and if so, against which deck?

WTF won't need it until a removal resurgance comes back. Even then as a board card only.

This question is regarding duress and its place in control decks. Against fish and workshop, duress is almost always only useful in the first 2-3 turns. After that you run out of goodies to hit. That means you want to run the full set. Against control, duress is a back breaker, allowing you to force your gameplan through. Howeverin the face of such a large fish meta, is packing 4x duress in a control deck a good idea?

If you are going first, chalice, rod, vial, as well as control components are all game. However, fetching out an u. sea first turn to duress means that you are that much less likely to hit drain mana on turn 2 due to the significant number of waste lands that are being played. In light of this, some players have been fetching out a lone swamp turn 1 to duress. How do you feel about this play? Putting off drain mana for a turn is significant when control vs fish battles are such close games already.

Finally, in our current environment, is duress and mana drain mutually exclusive? If you want to drain turn 2 a significant portion of the time, you can't afford to duress without fear.

So, which is it?

I don't think Turn 1 Duress is worth risking a random strip slowing you down, nor is it really effective at stopping threats currently. Yes you usually get the best card in their hand, but then they cast the second best threat and suddenly things don't look so hot anyways. It was far better when you had control mirros every single match, now you don't and it's not very good. Drain and Duress aren't mutually exclusive, it's just most decks aren't configured to take advantage of Duress so why bother running it?

[doomhed]

What is your opinion of U/G madness as an achetype? does it have the tools needed to compete in this very diverse metagame? For the Record I am speaking of the ESG-laiden verison that placed 7th @ waterbury 6

[Nantuko Rice]

Standstill

Has been cut from some fish builds for "DC trick" or "BS"...  however, what about the psychological power of standstill? Is the DC trick (easily disrupted by welder, swords, bounce) or the card quality selection of bs better than the psychological impact that standstill has on a player?

We all know that there is a psychological aspect involved in games of magic and when players have to make a decision, they can underthink or overthink, and make the wrong decisions.

[Vegeta2711]

What is your opinion of U/G madness as an achetype? does it have the tools needed to compete in this very diverse metagame? For the Record I am speaking of the ESG-laiden verison that placed 7th @ waterbury 6

No I don't think it's viable at all. I believe it's basically worse in every single way to a U/G Vial Fish or U/W/G Bird Shit deck. It runs worse creatures, no Aether Vial, no good removal spells, no Umezaza's Jitte while keeping a craptacular mana base.

In conculsion, don't play it.

Standstill

Has been cut from some fish builds for "DC trick" or "BS"... however, what about the psychological power of standstill? Is the DC trick (easily disrupted by welder, swords, bounce) or the card quality selection of bs better than the psychological impact that standstill has on a player?

We all know that there is a psychological aspect involved in games of magic and when players have to make a decision, they can underthink or overthink, and make the wrong decisions.

Psychological impact? Yes I feel muchbetter knowing my opponent is playing Fish / utter feces for cards. I think the only way you can weigh the true value of Standstill is by taking a stab at how many bad players you play against. In the original Fish decks it was decent, because if you cast Brainstorm you were drawing 3 crappy cards anyway. So why not use Standstill to keep those in your hand? In WTF or U/W you have cards that are actually worthwhile to fetch out and hence Brainstorm is pretty solid. The "DC Trick" is a random 'I win' combo, if you want to run a inconsiistent set of cards for random wins, so be it.

The psyc value of Standstill is pretty low if you know what your doing. Sometimes I know I'm going to get screwed over by playing into the card, but as long as you have a clue there's hardly a substanstial 'good decision - bad decision' that's soley keeping the card in the deck.